Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[118] to elect senators by single districts, instead of by counties, which would give the people a more equal representation. By the provisions of the call of that convention, which was adopted by the vote of the people, every town was to have at least one delegate, and that delegate might be selected from any part of the State by the voters of any town. The consequence was that there was an attempt to select the ablest men by both parties, without regard to location or residence; and many able men, who, on account of the political views of their neighbors, could not be elected by their home towns, were elected sometimes from the town of their birth, and sometimes from the town of their choice, and sometimes from the town itself requesting them to act. I think Governor Boutwell was elected by the town of Berlin, a little town on the edge of Worcester County, and not by Groton, the town where he resided. Mr. Benjamin F. Hallett, a very distinguished Hunker Democrat living in Boston, who had not the slightest hope of being elected in that city, was elected from the town of Wilbraham, and thus with many others; so that it may be fairly said that the ablest men of the State formed that convention. There were four hundred and twenty-one members of the convention. For myself, I had so far outlived newspaper libels and attacks, which by propriety of life and conduct one can always easily do, that I was elected from my home in Lowell, and served as chairman of the committee to which was assigned the revision of chapter six of the old constitution.

The debates in that body, as a rule, were distinguished by fairness, courtesy, and argument. Scarcely a distasteful personal allusion was made. It performed its work with great diligence, but, having voted to have its proceedings, including the speeches, reported verbatim, the session was too long protracted, because, under such conditions, everybody wants to say something which shall be read by somebody.

It is a singular fact in the history of all legislative assemblies that not much is actually done where the proceedings are officially reported. In the United States Senate there is more business done in the few days of secret or executive session, where no speeches are reported, than is done during the whole session in open Senate where the proceedings and speeches are published day by day, with very little profit to anybody. Indeed, for several years no report whatever was made of the proceedings of the Senate, which was deemed